The place was Youngstown Ohio; the event a Save America Rally; the gesture baffling. As former President Donald Trump listed what he regards as the foreign policy failures of his successor Joe Biden against a background of doomy music and warnings of World War 3 Trump’s supporters raised their right arms in gesture that looked disturbingly like a fascist salute.

It wasn’t quite the full Sieg Heil, because those who took part extended their index fingers as well as their arms, but parallels with old Leni Riefenstahl propaganda movies filmed at Nazi rallies were are as terrifying as they are unavoidable.

 

There are, it seems, a significant number of Americans willing to embrace the idea of unquestioning obedience to an authoritarian figure which to the rest of us seems pretty close to fascism.

 

In this episode Adrian Goldberg explores the cult of Trump with Heidi Cuda from the Radicalized Pod

 

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Produced in Birmingham by Adrian Goldberg and Harvey White.